The Connection Between The Environment And
Veganism: 5 Resources

Back in 2009 I published a list of resources for learning about the
connection between protecting the environment and veganism. Now I’m
publishing another similar list.

These lists are intended to help people write articles, give speeches, or
create pamphlets that encourage meat-reduction, vegetarianism and veganism
for the environment. If you have a class assignment about ‘saving the
planet’ or if you want to help your veg group make persuasive pamphlets
about eating eco-friendly, this list can help you.

Or… if you’re just curious about the connection and you want to learn
more, then this list is for you!

Take a look below. There’s the title of the piece, the URL to it, and a
description and/or a quote. Don’t forget to bookmark or print this article
if you think may be useful for later. (Of course, if you choose to print it,
please recycle the paper when you’re done.)

This guide comes from the Environmental Working Group. It was released in
2011. According to the graph on page 6, cheese is more than six times worse
for the environment than tofu; beef is ten times worse than rice; chicken is
six times worse than lentils. From the guide:

“If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the
road for 320 miles or line-drying your clothes half the time. [...] If
everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be
like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the
road.”

This detailed report by the United Nations Environment Programme published
in June 2010 describes the cause of environmental destruction:
over-consumption of resources. From the report:

“over the past 50 years humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and
extensively than in any comparable time period in human history, largely to
meet rapidly growing demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel.
This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the
diversity of life on Earth.” [...]

“Compared to industrial processes, agricultural processes have an
inherently low efficiency of resource use, which renders food, fibres and
fuels from agriculture among the more polluting resources. This is true
especially for animal products, where the metabolism of the animals is the
limiting factor.” [...]

“Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to
population growth, increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil
fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A
substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial
worldwide diet change, away from animal products.”

This report gives an in-depth look into the environmental impacts of animal
agribusiness. The report was published in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations. Check out the report’s executive
summary, part of which says:

“The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most
significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at
every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that
it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land
degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water
pollution and loss of biodiversity.”

“Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale
and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The
impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency. Major
reductions in impact could be achieved at reasonable cost.”

A comprehensive, fact-based and balanced examination of key aspects of the
farm animal industry published in 2008 by the Pew Commission on Industrial
Farm Animal Production.

“Both animals and their waste are concentrated and usually exceed the
capacity of the land to produce feed or absorb the waste. Consequently, the
rapid ascendance of ifap [Industrial Food Animal Production] has produced an
expanding array of deleterious environmental effects on local and regional
water, air, and soil resources.”

Article about meat-reduction and vegetarianism for the environment from the
Audubon Magazine. Here’s a snippet:

“The typical American diet now weighs in at more than 3,700 calories per
day, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and is dominated by
meat and animal products. As a result, what we put in our mouths now ranks
up there with our driving habits and our use of coal-fired electricity in
terms of how it affects climate change.”

“Simply put, raising beef, pigs, sheep, chicken, and eggs is very, very
energy intensive. More than half of all the grains grown in America actually
go to feed animals, not people, says the World Resources Institute. That
means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, and
fertilizers applied to grains, plus staggering percentages of all
agricultural land and water use, are put in the service of livestock. Stop
eating animals and you use dramatically less fossil fuels”

I hope thise list of resources helps you go veg or encourage others to go
veg.

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